One of Dame Felicity Lott’s early successes was as the lone protagonist of Poulenc’s La voix humaine on the 1977 Glyndebourne tour; later she sang Blanche in the memorable revival of Les dialogues des Carmelites at Covent Garden in 1983. These two characters, the depressed, deserted lover, tormented by jealousy and regret, and the Carmelite novice with premonitions of martyrdom, suggest moods of melancholy and mysticism that seem right for her style. The other great Poulenc heroine, the wild and wacky Therese in Les mamelles de Tiresias has never, I think, been one of her roles and those of Poulenc’s melodies that call for a broader, sentimental cafe-concert manner don’t really suit her.
This is Dame Felicity’s third all-Poulenc disc; the earlier ones were both with Graham Johnson as accompanist (on Hyperion, 10/85 and Forlane, 8/94). I greeted the latter issue enthusiastically and although there is much to enjoy in this new recital, it isn’t such a satisfying programme. Pascal Roge is her partner and he is the central figure in Decca’s ongoing series of Poulenc issues. The composer was adamant that in Montparnasse, the opening song with words by, and about, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, the line about “un poete lyrique d’Allemagne” shouldn’t be sad. A comparison between Lott and Pierre Bernac, for whom the song was written, and another famous soprano who has recorded it, Jessye Norman, doesn’t flatter Lott’s approach. Roge plays the accompaniments quite beautifully, all with their own “separate song” as Poulenc wrote. In the opening of the first of the Deux Poemes, “C”, Louis Aragon’s lament for a defeated France, he catches exactly the “veiled quality” that Poulenc said he was looking for.
The three poems by “Louise Lalanne” are in fact the work of Apollinaire and his friend, the painter Marie Laurencin, and the third of them, “Hier”, is my favourite performance on this disc. Lott’s choice of p and pp tones to evoke the list of things that the poet remembers from yesterday is a moment of distilled emotion and nostalgia.
The recital is anchored as it were by three groups of songs for or about children. La courte paille to poems by the children’s author Maurice Careme was composed by Poulenc for Denise Duval, his favourite soprano, to sing to her young son. The music, though, is anything but childlike, very demanding for singer and pianist. Even more so, the Cinq Poemes by Max Jacob, which are evocations of his childhood in Brittany. These, and the four Chansons pour enfants to words by Jean Nohain, deserve to be better known. Strangely, neither Poulenc in his own Journal de mes melodies, nor Pierre Bernac in his Francis Poulenc The Man and His Songs, mention these four songs. Is there some personal mystery about them? – Jean Nohain was two years younger than Poulenc, and when these settings were composed in 1934 was just having his first great success with popular lyrics such as Couches dans le foin, a great hit for the composer-chanteuse Mireille.
The Airs chantes, to poems by the Greek symbolist Jean Moreas, can be heard in Poulenc’s own recording with Suzanne Peignot, who did not have such a luxurious voice as Felicity Lott, but both sopranos convey what Poulenc called the “explosion of Joy” at the end of the last song, “Air vif”. Bleuet, to words by Apollinaire about a young recruit, and Le portrait, a sort of ironic love-letter by Colette, are both fine interpretations of difficult songs. What a trial it is for an interpretative artist constantly to be compared with singers of the past! But with a prolific recording artist such as Poulenc it’s impossible not to do so, and no one will ever equal his own performance of Toreador, accompanying Denise Duval (Clio, 3/87 – nla). The recital concludes with Fancy, the Shakespeare setting Poulenc made for a collection of songs for children.
To sum up, a worthy successor to Dame Felicity’s earlier recitals, which although it doesn’t surpass them, offers a rich survey of Poulenc’s songs.'